Part video game, part toy-line, part imaginative creation tool and part money-spinning corporate initiative, Disney Infinity is a difficult product to pin down. But perhaps above all, it is wildly, almost recklessly ambitious. Not necessarily in scope or innovation, though it doesn’t lack for either, but in desire for its success. Disney has labelled it a ‘priority project’, complete with the blessing and guidance of John Lasseter, it is the first time Disney characters from different universes have been allowed to interact, it reportedly cost $100m to make and Disney Interactive has all but abandoned any other project in order to focus on this potential behemoth. Or potential white elephant.

Disney have labelled it a ‘platform’, rather than a single game, in the hope that Infinity will be around for a long time. Disney’s enormous portfolio --which extends from Mickey Mouse to Marvel Comics by way of Star Wars-- will theoretically provide toys, games and movie tie-in opportunities all based in Infinity’s engine.Your Disney Infinity pack of Star Wars VII will likely be as integral to Disney’s merchandise drive as any Darth Vader lunch box or action figure.

The Concept

Before we delve too far into the mechanics of it all, it’s best to explain what Infinity is. For any parent that is familiar with Activision’s Skylanders phenomenon, it’s ostensibly the same deal but with Disney characters. You place physical toys on a base connected to your console by USB, which will read the information contained within each toy and transport them into your game world.

Infinity also has ‘Play Sets’, additional plastic models which can be placed on the base to unlock a four-hour-or-so adventure in familiar Disney universes. A swashbuckling sword-fighting tale for Pirates of the Carribean, or a vehicular based romp with Cars. And so it goes.

You have to use the corresponding figures with these individual adventures --Jack Sparrow for Pirates, Mr. Incredible for The Incredibles-- so where Infinity gets interesting is in the Toy Box mode. This allows you to mix and match characters, create your own worlds and set up your own games with a simple editing suite.

The Starter Pack

Disney have played it smart with the initial package for Infinity. For £59.99 you get the game disc with the Toy Box mode, the base, a three-in-one Play Set for Monsters University, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Incredibles, and the corresponding figures of Sully, Captain Jack Sparrow and Mr. Incredible. As an initial outlay, it’s hard to argue the value. You could argue against the selection of characters, Disney perhaps withholding its biggest hitters for separate packs. I would have liked to have seen one of Disney's classic characters alongside its contemporary peers, for instance.

Character choice is all subjective, of course, but there is cynicism in the fact that none of the play sets can be enjoyed in local co-op without buying the villain and sidekicks packs. You can’t have Jack Sparrow in the Monsters University playset, so you will have to stump up £14.99 for Mike Wazowski and Randall figures if you want to play as them in the game. If you are treating the figures purely as vessels for in-game content, this is a steep ask. But much of the buy-in with Disney Infinity lies within the toys themselves.

The Figures

Any Skylanders fan will tell you that a large part of its appeal is collecting and displaying the vast army of figures that have been released. Well-designed and high-quality, they will often take pride of place on a bedroom shelf. There’s a certain magic to placing a toy on the portal and watching it materialise in game too. One Skylanders-collecting friend said the biggest appeal is finding rare figures and watching them come to life in game to reveal their powers. Whether Disney Infinity will be able to recreate that same sense of discovery with its roster of familiar characters remains to be seen.

However, any Disneyphiles will be pleased with the quality of the figures. They’re not poseable, so aren’t ‘toys’ in the sense they can be played with (that’s what the video game is for) but instead are smart collectible figures. Infinity links the different characters with a unifying art style. Angular and caricatured, the homogenisation of the Disney properties initially sounds like a cop-out, but it’s with the figures on display that the common theme begins to make sense. They stand together as a cohesive set, ripe for display. The premium vinyl finish is lovely too. I’m a fan, but then I am a Disney-loving man-child that likes to collect action figures, so your own mileage may vary.

The Toy Box

Infinity’s grand idea as a video game is having you empty your digital toys on your digital floor, and letting you play with them however you wish. The Toy Box is a freeform gameworld that you can edit and tweak to your heart’s content, dropping in toys, land, buildings and characters wherever you like. For gaming comparisons, it’s a simpler, Disney-themed version of LittleBigPlanet or Minecraft’s editing suites.

The Toy Box will likely be your first port of call, pulled into a half-finished landscape with Cinderella’s castle at the heart of it. A few neat tutorials explain controls and the most basic of editing tools. What’s nice about the Toy Box is that it’s perfectly capable of building complex constructions, but is more than happy for you to tool about making mischief and chucking toys around slapdash. It encourages it, giving your character a magic wand that can zap land, toys or buildings in and out of existence.

Editing can be done on the ground through the wand, or in a bird’s eye view as a floating spark. It’s simple enough for older children or cack-handed adults, selecting objects is a case of calling up the menu and wheeling through the toy catalogue, then you can pop them in largely wherever you like.

There are niggles with the controls, but there’s plenty of scope here to make any fiddling worth it. The neatest feature is being able to link together a set of items to perform actions and create your own games. Special items (the painfully named ‘Creativi-toys’) such as music amplifiers, firework cannons and pressure plates can be linked together. At its simplest: set the fireworks to go off when you step on the pad.

There are modifiers --time delays, for instance-- and possible chains to make something much more complex. My favourite, simple illustrative example of Disney Infinity is being able to build a stadium, set up a pitch with a net at either end, connect a scoreboard and have Lightning McQueen play a game of car football against Sully riding Dumbo, the cardboard crowd jerry-rigged to go wild with a musical accompaniment when a goal is scored.

There’s plenty of pre-built games, challenges and constructions available in the Toy Box to give you inspiration, and you will be able to share creations online with other players. Avalanche has also said there will be competitions to build the best themed Toy Box too. Everything's a little rudimentary at the moment, with pre-built Toy Boxes supplying simplistic kart racers and platformers, but there's the basis of something good here. Once the community wrap their heads around the intricacies of the editor, we should be in for some excellent creations.

My main issue with the structure of the Toy Box, however, is that it makes you work too hard to unlock essential pieces. You can find toys scattered around in the Toy Box or Play Sets, buy them in randomised disc packs, or ‘win’ them in the Toy Vault. A random selection of toys appear and you use a ‘spin’ (earned while playing) to select one in a random lottery. The collection of toys can be compelling, firing that victory synapse in the brain when you win a rare item. However, many Creativi-toys that are integral to your constructions are locked away at the beginning. It just adds a needless sense of grind to a game otherwise focussed on knockabout fun.

For all that Infinity can be construed as a cash-in on their own properties and the success of Skylanders, it’s hard to be too critical of a game that encourages creativity. As a parent, too, the idea of being able to help my son create worlds in a co-operative edit mode is sentimentally appealing. Though at the time of writing my son is only one, so our shared experience of Infinity thus far is him knocking the figures off the Base and trying to eat Sully’s head.

The Play Sets

While the Toy Box is Infinity’s marquee mode, it’s also able to provide more traditional adventures. These ‘Play Sets’ are standalone games based on a particular universe. You get three with the starter pack, with new play sets available for £32.99 which gets you an adventure plus two figures. To access a Play Set, simply place the corresponding piece on the slot on the base and select the option from the menu.

The Play Sets are simultaneously a demonstration of Infinity’s variety and its inherent weaknesses as a video game. Because the grand idea is to have any Disney property transported into Infinity, the framework needs to be flexible but familiar enough that swapping characters between Play Sets and the Toy Box mode has a sense of cogency. Everything needs to work alone, but everything needs to work together. This makes it hard to specialise, leading to fairly basic gameplay within the Play Sets.

That’s not to say they aren’t entertaining in their own right, and it’s that variety which pulls them through. Monsters University has you playing as Sully, creeping around the rival Fear Tech school pulling pranks, scaring students and draping the foliage in toilet paper. A pleasant open-world distraction. Pirates of the Caribbean and The Incredibles focus more on combat and platforming, the former a decent cinematic adventure with sea-faring combat and customisable galleons, the latter dropping you in a city and asking you to protect its citizens. The Incredibles is Crackdown Disney-style, with the titular family clambering around buildings finding unlockables while occasionally dropping to street level to fight robots. The city and missions are a little bland, but it’s an enjoyable romp nonetheless.

All the games are controlled like a standard third-person action game (left stick to move, right stick to manipulate the camera, buttons to perform actions) and it’s decent enough. It’s a floatier than you’d like, and a tad rough around the edges. Platforming can be fiddly, while glitches are common. But there’s aways plenty to do, challenges to perform and toy capsules (unlocking items in the Toy Box) to find.

Disney Infinity’s long term success depends on the quality of these Play Sets and it will be interesting to see how they develop and evolve across the game’s lifespan.

The Verdict

Disney Infinity is a difficult game to pigeonhole. It’s also a difficult game to recommend unconditionally. To embrace Disney Infinity is to buy-in to the whole package: collecting the physical toys, building in the Toy Box, enjoying the Play Sets. Without interest in all its components, its appeal is diminished. The Toy Box isn’t detailed enough to recommend as a singular creation tool, the Play Sets aren’t good enough to recommend as standalone games. Put them together, however, with a predilection for the figurines and you have a fun, creative and rewarding bundle.

It is much easier to vouch for the value of the Starter Pack. There is always going to be concerns about how expensive a game like Infinity (or indeed Skylanders) can be, with new packs needed to unlock more content. The extra Play Sets and figurines are too pricey, but the initial outlay buys you a lot of content and play time.

One feels that while the decision to bring Infinity to bear was a business one, there is passion and a duty of care in its development. The two will inevitably butt heads, and Infinity is a game that can’t help but ask a lot of its players’ time and money. But if you are willing to invest both, and take a gamble on Infinity's potential evolution, you will find plenty to enjoy.